


Five times Myka did as Helena asked (and the one time she didn’t)

by NuMo



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: 5+1 Things, AU, BDSM, Dom/sub, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-11
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 21:42:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NuMo/pseuds/NuMo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been… unbalanced, somehow, Myka thought, later; but caught in the already-spinning moment she’d explained it away as her own uneasiness. She’d felt, all too keenly, the illicitness and the utter rightness of what they were doing, fucking half an hour after a friend’s burial, lips, teeth, fingers, nails setting fire to every single inch of skin, every single nerve ending – it had been more potent than any drug and, later, Myka would swear she hadn’t been the only one affected.</p><p>---</p><p>This is, I think, the most graphic thing I've ever written. It begins quite innocently, as these things are wont to do, but - I suppose you should consider yourself warned. </p><p>WH13 and its characters don’t belong to me, I’m just playing and I promise I’ll return them when I’m done. </p><p>As always, I love me some feedback.</p><p>---</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

“A dashing rescue, a gallant rescuer, a brilliant if momentarily baffled rescuee – darling, things could only be more perfect if you kissed me now.”

Myka had no idea why she did it. None. It was ridiculous. It was preposterous. It was the single best damn kiss of her life, dangling above a street by virtue of an awesome (if slightly outdated)… grappler? Gun? Grappler gun? 

It must be the adrenaline, she decided when conscious thought returned during their thankfully slower trip back down. Adrenaline. Right. 

“Don’t think this changes anything,” she warned the woman. Wells (H. blessed G. Wells, for crying out loud!) didn’t reply, but obviously heard, and understood. 

When their boots touched ground, the Englishwoman grinned like the blazes, but never so much as alluded to what had happened twenty feet higher up.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

An unexpected interrogation in a goddamn cemetery, a stolen kiss behind trees, a whispered request. “Will you not celebrate life with me, in the very face of death?” 

_(I don’t belong in this world. Everything that ever mattered in my life is gone now. I asked to be bronzed. I have no tether here.)_

An address pressed into her hand, a hotel room with the blinds lowered, a bed they’d almost rolled off of. It had been… unbalanced, somehow, Myka thought, later; but caught in the already-spinning moment she’d explained it away as her own uneasiness. She’d felt, all too keenly, the illicitness and the utter rightness of what they were doing, fucking half an hour after a friend’s burial, lips, teeth, fingers, nails setting fire to every single inch of skin, every single nerve ending – it had been more potent than any drug and, later, Myka would swear she hadn’t been the only one affected.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Celebrate life. She needed that, today. The retrieval had been… messy, the body count too goddamn high. She’d showered for twenty full minutes and still felt blood and nausea and pins and needles, and H. bloody G. Wells dared to walk in on her even though she must have _heard_ that someone was still in here. 

The woman had it coming, so. There hadn’t been any need for that smug little comment, either, nor that once-over. 

“Why don’t you give in to your hunger and have your licentious ways with me, darling?” Oh, indeed, _darling?_

She slammed Wells to the bathroom door, one hand on her throat, one on her sternum, pushing the woman into the wood so hard she’d have sworn it bent. She might have snarled. 

She kissed Wells, long, hard, hungry; bit and worried those oh so clever lips, not enough to draw blood, but enough to leave them very, very tender, and perhaps a little wiser too. Pulling back, she saw Wells’ eyes, black eclipsing brown, hunger matching her own; her hand on the woman’s chest informed her of breath rate and heartbeat, so very much increased – indeed, darling. 

Two quick moves later she had the woman’s hands over her head, pinning them with one of hers while the other roamed the body she still had wedged to the door. Her towel had long since fallen away, and Wells was decidedly too dressed, so she ripped the shirt open (it wasn’t as if the woman couldn’t afford twenty more on a whim), catching the skin at the edge of Wells’ bra between teeth and lip and sucked-in breath until the other woman whimpered.

Wells struggled, once, when Myka flipped the woman’s belt buckle open and pushed her jeans down her thighs, but a shove to her wrists, hard enough to jolt even Myka’s hand, persuaded Wells to hold still while Myka worked impatient fingers between her legs. 

Not content, not halfway _near_ content with that, Myka’s mouth descended on that marble column of a neck like wrecking ball, and hit with as much impact. Wells tried to move her head to catch Myka’s ear with her tongue – she was clever like that – but Myka pulled back instantly. “Don’t.” She couldn’t hiss a word without sibilants, but she could make it sharp enough for Wells to understand. It woke a rumble in the other woman’s throat, but no movement backed it up. 

Myka buried her face in the crook of Wells’ neck again, teeth raking skin, muscle, bone, leaving angry red lines. Her hands pushed up – oh, yes, hands plural. She was taller than the Brit, and intent on using the advantage. Wells’ breast jutted out as her arms were forced upwards, and the sight, the goddamn _heaving_ breaths this woman was _daring_ to take, called for- 

Bite, not kiss. Bruise, not caress. Her other hand encountered wetness, even through the fabric still between fingers and source. She growled. Wells did, too, possibly. Not that Myka cared. She pushed the panties aside and jammed her fingers upwards, and, yes, Wells did growl where she had no bloody right to do so, even went so far as to grind into Myka’s hand.

She stopped immediately. “Don’t!” she repeated, even more stringent than before, and with another emphasizing jolt to the woman’s captured wrists. She didn’t want Wells to do anything other than _take_ it. _She_ wanted this, _she_ needed this, and she was _not_ open to discussing parameters at this point.

Wells’ eyes never left hers, after that. They were dark, with desire and maybe a little apprehension (heavens knew Myka had worked hard enough to put it there), and sure as hell not smug anymore. They drooped shut once, when Myka withdrew her fingers to find a better angle, but popped open again immediately when they returned full force. 

Their motion was enough to almost take her feet off the floor, after all. Myka knew enough about leverage, was strong enough apply the principle, and after today’s business, reckless enough to fuck Helena bloody G. Wells upright against the bathroom door. She grunted at the thought, at the wetness between her own legs, at the feeling of sheer _power_ the woman’s frankly wanton moans evoked, the electricity crackling between their two pairs of eyes. 

It made her falter, almost. Almost, it made her think about what was happening, what she was _doing_ , until she gritted her teeth and picked up speed and drove into that slick wetness with the relentless power of a piston engine. 

She never even touched Wells’ clit and yet when the woman came, Myka would have sworn she’d never before seen her come so hard.


	4. Chapter 4

“Egyptian cotton, darling. One of the nicest fabrics in the world. So sturdy, so supple – why don’t you make use of it?”

Except for that one time, they hadn’t done anything like that ever anymore. Myka had been taken aback, almost ashamed, by what she’d done to Helena that night, even before the bruises had started to show. And Helena, afterwards, hadn’t asked for anything more than, well, sex. Not plain sex, never that, because Helena definitely didn’t feel at all restricted by ‘things you just don’t do’. But it had been kinky in a ‘why don’t I lick between your toes, darling’ kind of way, not in a ‘make use of Egyptian cotton’ kind of way. Balanced, always, always give _and_ take, not this… domineering thing. There. She’d said it.

There was no doubt what Helena meant with her words – while Myka had been new to quite a few of the twists Helena had suggested, she wasn’t _that_ inexperienced. And for some reason, the memory of how wet Helena had been when she’d been all but suspended from Myka’s hand had leapt to the forefront of Myka’s mind at this newest one, relentlessly shouting for attention. 

So she set to work, methodically tearing up the spare sheet from the hotel room’s wardrobe. She wouldn’t quite meet Helena’s eyes while she did so, but when she did look up from her handiwork to see the Englishwoman already naked and spread-eagled on the bed, her breath all but stopped for a moment. 

Jeez, the whole goddamn sight was just too, too cliché. Gauze curtains playing in the breeze, deep blue desert dusk outside accenting soft golden light from tea candles in tiny punched-tin holders, a woman with alabaster skin stretched out languorously on a four-poster, for crying out loud. 

Thank God for subconscious actions. Before she could think better of it, Myka had Helena’s left leg tied down and was halfway through the knots on her right ankle. Looking at how Helena’s breaths were already coming faster, Myka decided she might as well go all the way now – it was damn hot in its own way, to know that Helena was hers like this. 

To know that Helena couldn’t move a muscle, that she was at the mercy of whatever Myka would come up with next (and there were a few thoughts already forming), that until Myka released her, Egyptian cotton, so sturdy, so supple, would hold Helena all but immobile, exposed, defenseless. Well, as much as she’d let herself be, for sure – Myka was pretty certain Helena could have freed herself anytime if she so wanted, but then, that… that _surrender_ was part of it, was at the very heart of it, right? 

Helena wanted this. She trusted Myka with this. 

Myka wasn’t sure she could have, if the roles were reversed. She did _not_ think she’d be as calm as Helena seemed to be, if she were tied down like that, escapist abilities or not. Certainly not as aroused. What did this make her, then? A-

“Kindly stop thinking and mark me yours already,” Helena growled, stopping most major thought processes outside doing what she asked. Myka knew how to do that latter part, after all. 

She remembered wondering, later, if there hadn’t been more to the darkness in Helena’s eyes than simple, or even kink-kicked, arousal. But hindsight, as they said, was always 20/20.


	5. Chapter 5

“Myka, I’m so glad I found you. I need you. Won’t you help me?”

Wells had got to be kidding. She had pulled that goddamn stunt before, in Yosemite. Had played Myka one last time, had won one last time. Had gotten away, had gotten Myka disowned (huh, right, ‘take three months of paid leave of absence, Agent Bering’, like, _please_ ), and now she had the goddamn _nerve_ to come here, into her father’s bookstore, and talk of _need?_

In a whirl of practiced motions, Myka had Wells face-down on the floor, arm up behind her back. Then she started rifling through the woman’s clothes, discarding a gun she remembered so very well, and finally used Wells’ own belt to bind her wrists for want of any other form of restraints, daring her to speak a _single_ word while she did so.

Wells didn’t. She seemed almost resigned, in fact. 

Straightening up, staring down, absentmindedly fiddling with the shop’s cordless, Myka found herself filling with… something. A dark wave of something. It wasn’t hate, as such. 

It wasn’t hate. It wasn’t love, either; it was something broken, something hurting and hurtful, something… something dark.

Something that had Myka’s hand dive into Wells’ hair, pull her head up and kiss her, hard. Not a lover’s kiss. Something broken, hurting and hurtful; she made damn sure it was. 

And still, when she looked into them again, those eyes were so goddamn… acquiescent. So Myka yanked harder, kissed harder. Bit. And, yes, there _was_ a spark when they both tasted blood. There _was_ a spark, damn her, and then it was gone again, and Wells slumped her shoulders and lolled her head and stopped resisting, _damn her._

It became a race. Myka wanted that spark back, wanted Helena to do something, anything, rather than simply, wordlessly, _meekly_ take whatever Myka decided to dole out. She needed her to react, needed to… 

Bite. Bite, pull, yank. Rip. Buttons flew into the many little corners of a Colorado Springs bookstore, a hand buried itself in ebony hair, another clawed at a ridiculously lacy bra. It tore with a very satisfactory sound, as lace will, and Myka clamped down on a nipple, teeth and all, and Wells didn’t make so much as a sound, damn her. So back to the neck it was, hand yanking hard at hair to expose skin, fingers replacing lips on nipple, teeth finding new purchase in trapezius, anything, _anything_ to get a goddamn reaction.

And hell, yes, there was. There was. But Helena fucking Wells had no business getting off on what Myka did, no fucking way. How dare she? How _dare_ she? Breathing hard, Myka found herself with her hand pulled back and ready to strike, with lips twisted into a snarl, with eyes riveted on brown ones that stared back in a mixture of arousal, almost-fear and that goddamn acceptance again.

She shot up from where she’d been crouching, releasing Wells as if the woman was poisonous instead of just fucking with her mind. “No.” She shook her head, biting down on the back of her hand, breathing hard through her nose. “No.”

She picked up the phone.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We switch to Helena's POV here. I'm somewhat exasperated with myself about that, but I simply couldn't make it work, the other way round. I beg forgiveness.
> 
> \- we do descend a little into madness at this point, I'm afraid -

She is there when you, manacles on your wrists as if you would ever physically assault her, are led into the white-walled room, bare except for a table and a pair of chairs. She sits, expressionless, arms folded, briefcase at her feet. 

Myka.

You do not know what has prompted this. You do not know at which stage this game is, right now, right here, so you decide to remain cautious. 

You opened up twice, to her, and twice it did not end well – the first time, you barely escaped, the second time landed you here.

“What’s this, then?” you say, all lightness and nonchalance.

She is not fooled – but then, she would not be. “I’ve heard that you aren’t being very cooperative.”

“Well, darling,” you say, trying to sound reasonable, “it’s supposed to be punishment. My collaboration is not exactly required, you see. Nor is it expectable.”

“They refrained from-” Yes. It is a sore point. You know what they did not do to you. They have explained what they chose not to do to you. The Janus Coin. You know that your soul is already twisted, bent, broken; _they_ threatened to truly split your mind in two. No. Anything, anything but that, you said in a moment of weakness, and look where _that_ has landed you.

“They _refused_ ,” you sneer, “to punish me in a manner befitting my crime, subjecting me to _psychology_ instead.” 

“See me pity you,” she replies with a calm shake of her head. “You know, it doesn’t work when you just sit in the therapist’s office and never say a word.”

“Which is why I’m sure that this is its own special kind of torment they thought up for me.” You feel your chin jut forwards sharply and do not stop it. You instantly regret giving in to the impulse when you see her stand and turn to leave.

“I don’t know why I ever thought coming here was a good idea,” she says, and you freeze. It had been her idea to come? Your thoughts race with theories, probabilities, possibilities, as it used to when you were out there, working. With her. So gratifyingly. Almost enough so to save you. 

Almost. 

You know she is the only chance of that – it is why, after your escape, you sought her out, after all – and she is walking away from you; you cannot let that happen.

“Oh, alright then,” you try for levity again, but possibly there is a hint of tremor in your voice. Possibly she has heard. How much does she know of your darkness? How much does she guess? “I’ll take the bait: What do you want from me?”

“What makes you think I want anything from you?” she hisses, and her question wakes your sodding pride, and makes you do another thing that you are immediately certain has been a mistake.

“Everyone does,” you shrug, and suddenly, she is at your side, hand buried in your hair, pulling back until the very chair tilts and you give an extremely mortifying little yelp. Possibly not a mistake, so, a small part of your mind whispers.

“I daresay it’s rather the other way round, Wells. What do _you_ want from _me_ , then, hm?”

 _She knows_ , you think then. However it has come to pass, she knows. But you are not quite certain, and you need to be, you need to be you need to need to be because you are still and always falling and she is the only thing even remotely close to a safeguard against your abyss. So you let your eyes flicker towards her breasts (it does come easy; they _are_ right in front of your face and ever so delectable), and begin, “Well, darl-”

“I _don’t_ think,” she snarls, tightening her fist, “I’m going to like what you are about to say.”

 _Thank you._ You have never believed in any form of the divine, but you do feel closer to deliverance right now than you ever thought possible since your world’s light was so brutally extinguished. Your only outward reaction, though, is a slight swallow, and a bow of your head. 

It is, apparently, not enough. “So, not a word from you anymore. Do we understand each other?” she presses, only relenting when you nod, your hair pulling taut and slackening again. “Good.”

She releases your chair with enough force to have its impact jar your teeth, and walks back to her own, retrieving her briefcase. You do not know what it might contain but you hope, and you gasp when she clicks two clasps that echo in the silence, and cease breathing when she reaches in. 

Then, “Close your eyes,” before you have a chance of knowing what she is pulling out. Your eyes meet hers for the briefest moment, and yet that short glimpse tells you what you need to know, shows you what you need to see. 

She knows. She knows that you love to see, need to see, have to see, always, everything. She knows that, in a century in bronze, you have not seen, have not heard, have not had anything to distract you from whatever mockery and torment your thoughts had come up with. She knows where you have been and where you are, who you have been and who you are, what you need and have ever needed since a Paris night you have relived too often. 

And she, calmly confident in the knowledge and strength that you, too, know her to possess, is asking you to trust her with all of it. 

You have never given thanks in prayer, but you find yourself doing so now, as wordless, boundless gratitude follows your decision.

Your eyes flutter close.

The crop bites into the fabric of your blouse, right above your clavicle. 

She must have practiced, you think as she reduces your shirt to tatters in the span of minutes, striding around you in a slow, prowling circle. She must have practiced; she is prepared – the thought bolsters your decision, reinforces your trust. You dimly hear her push away the table, her snapping, almost, _almost_ light blows already clouding your mind with sweet, sweet pain. 

You do not move a muscle. You trust her, but this is not yet enough, not by far.

“Stand.” _She knows._

She cannot rip your trousers apart with a mere crop, you realize, its fabric is a lot sturdier than the blouse has been. So her next order does not surprise you, and that very fact deepens your trust another notch. “Strip,” she says. “And don’t think for a moment you’re allowed to open your eyes.”

You do your best to undress yourself while handcuffed, and you take pride in what you think is a passable attempt at a bit of grace while doing so. For her, you will always try to move gracefully. You straighten, hands in front of your sex not out of modesty but necessity, bound as they are.

“Stay standing. Keep your legs nice and close, and don’t you _dare_ get off on this.” 

Unseeing, bound and naked, welts forming on your torso, you feel freer, closer to calm than you have in a long time. 

She starts a second circle around you, and it sees your whole body paid meticulous attention to. The circle’s completion leaves you covered in a shroud of pain and warmth where the crop has landed, cold and ache where it is too long gone or has not visited yet. You feel your nerves pulse with sensitiveness, feel your thoughts bowing, receding, acceding to pain’s dominion, feel your mind sink into abeyance’s welcoming arms. And, much as you know she has forbidden it, your arousal mounts as your hold over yourself wanes. It is visceral, the inevitable reaction of your senses to what she is doing to you; how can you change it? You are trembling with the effort, though, and you hope she sees, you hope it will suffice.

“You actually like this, don’t you,” she says, changing direction on her third circle. Her crop bites a hair’s breadth from your nipple, and you fight the gasp that threatens to leave your throat. “I will make your head swim with pain,” she continues, her purr a promise, her crop landing on a rib that already sports a welt. You do not know if it is her voice, or her words, or the pain she twins them with that affects you like it does, but- “I will clothe you in pain,” the crop’s tip runs along a shoulder blade, “bathe you in pain,” comes sharply down on a hip bone, “until you no longer know the difference between it and you.” 

_She knows_. Blow upon blow rains down on you, and with every one you silently rejoice; every one is but a thread in the web she weaves for you to fall into, because she knows, _she knows_ , she knows.

Pains wraps you as promised, finds buttocks, thighs, spine, nipples, finds every inch of you but the small triangle guarded by cuffed hands; and though your arousal roars disapproval, there is a part of your mind, a place inside you that you are on the verge of reaching, that knows this is not about _sexual_ release.

She knows you need to reach that place. She knows that what she does will take you there. She knows, you know – now that she has brought you this far – that you have been there before, more than a century ago, that you have fractured and broken and lost a part of yourself there. She knows, you know, that, with every blow she delivers, you get closer to the point from which you have held yourself apart for so very long.

She knows, you know, that she is, was, and will ever be the only one capable of taking you there.

After her fourth circle, your breaths come labored, uneven; you shake like a leaf in a storm, and there might be wetness on your cheeks, wetness on your thighs, but you neither know nor care because you are so close, so close so close-

“I think I ordered you not to get off on this,” she says, trailing the crop’s tip through the traces of your arousal, then across your cheek, and you shudder as part of your mind strains to lean into the touch while the remnants of your control try to keep as still as she has commanded. “I distinctly remember saying something to that effect,” she adds dangerously, and when she finishes, “this does not please me, Wells,” you do shudder, once, because the tone of her disapproval, the promise of retribution – she knows you need just one small step further. 

“You’re almost there,” she says and you fight a sob because _she knows_ , “aren’t you?” The crop lands on the inside of your thigh, so agonizingly close to your pulsing arousal, but your mind is no longer clear enough to choose which ‘there’ she means. “Answer me.”

And you know you do not need to choose. She will. “Yes, Myka.” Your voice is thick on the two words. 

“You want me to take you there, don’t you?” The crop slides along an underarm. “Answer me.” A sharp bite of the crop’s edge on a nipple, and you answer without thinking because whichever ‘there’ she means, you want to, you want to want need to need her to take you there.

“Yes, Myka,” so very quickly.

She is silent. For a moment, fear swells in you that you might have done wrong somehow, that she might leave you now, leave you standing stranded helpless on the cusp, but then you feel her breath on your cheek, cold on wetness you do not fathom, wetness that does not matter because only her breath her voice her presence matter. She lingers for a moment and you feel yourself swaying in the net she has woven, and then she says, her words as clear as yours have been indistinct, “I won’t.”

Your eyes fly open. Your mouth, too, even if you yourself do not know whether it is to beg or to protest, and she repeats, “I won’t,” both word formed so very conscientiously, and you are so deeply in this her presence command dominion that you think you must have done wrong said wrong she cannot cannot do this not do this-

Your eyes lock for a moment, and you know she sees the panic rise within you the longer she does not move does not do act do something anything any any thi-

Something gives. You hear a wail, no, a shard of glass shattering, a violin’s string breaking, a hapless, helpless whine of sound almost at the edge of your hearing and your hands come up, and your fingers curl, and your feardoubtneed strikes out at her, clawing at everything it happens to encounter, raking, tearing, and still there is this razorbladed howl winding around your fury and it is yours even though she has ordered silence but you do not know where you are anymore she has taken you here you trusted her to take you here she says that she will not take you further and you need to you need to you need her to you need-

“Stop.” Her voice reaches you will always always reach you. You freeze, take a step back, look at her _‘close your eyes’ she said_ you look with sheer, mindless horror at what you have done what she has done what is done what might be broken beyond repair; you flee from those eyes and what they mirror, you whirl and stumble away, raise your cuffed hands to- 

“Helena.” Like a line suddenly snapped taught, like the tether she knows she must know _she knows_ she is to you, the word holds you. “Come back to me.”

The power of her command; you find yourself turning, walking, your motions small jerky nothing like as graceful as you need to be in front of her. Pain still thrums in you, but it is so different now. You are no longer falling freely, but you are so very, very far from anything tangible as well. 

“Look at me, Helena.” The power of a name. Your eyes come up obediently, freely dispersing whatever they hold for her perusal. You cannot name it. You do not care. It is hers to see, hers to catalogue, hers all hers. “I’m here with you, Helena,” she says and you do not dare believe. “I took you here, and here I am, too.”

Your eyelids twitch, flutter; you cannot look away you want to look away you must not look away. You do not dare- “I will take you further, Helena, if you trust me this one last time.” The tip of her crop rests on one cheek, her palm on the other. Your eyes jump, right, left, right, your still-fogged mind tries to make sense of- “Trust me, Helena,” she says, never giving you the time to- “Tell me whether you trust me. Tell me. _Tell me.”_

Eyes widen in recognition as your dazed mind returns to the very beginning. _She knows,_ she is; calm confident strength knowledge _trust._

“…yes.”

It is a whisper, and the most far-reaching sound that you have ever heard. It is over in the fraction of a second, and continues to reverberate, over and over and over, yes Myka yes for you Myka for you yes. 

You shudder again as the enormity of your yes impacts. You cannot keep your head upright but your eyes never leave hers, and still your lips are formed around oath, promise, deliverance that has left them and will never leave you, and still you tremble as she catches you, as the contact wakes a hiss of pain that mixes inevitably inexorably with the tenderness and reassurance in her eyes, and your hiss revolves in your chest, becomes hoarse exhalation as you come apart in front of her, set free by a whispered affirmation of what you both have known from the start.


	7. Epilogue

It took a while. Myka shrugged out of her jacket to wrap Helena in a bit more warmth than her arms would give, and watched. Watched over the woman who had opened herself, who had _given_ herself, _all_ of herself, at Myka’s command. Her trembling could be so very many things; Myka didn’t feel at all sure she understood all of Helena’s journey to this point, but she did know Helena was better for having arrived, finally arrived.

She had no doubt that, wherever Helena would go from here, wherever _they_ would go from here, Helena could go new places now, places not so filled with hurt and anger and madness.

All it had taken had been Myka Bering stepping up into the trust she’d always known Helena extended her.

A hand, cuffed to its counterpart, came up, finger outstretched and trembling and reaching for Myka’s jaw and never daring to close in and actually touch. “Myka…” the word was raw, coming from somewhere that had been deeply buried for too long. And still that finger hovered, shaking now from the strain of holding it motionless against gravity and handcuffs and a second arm’s weight.

Myka brought her own hand up, and covered Helena’s hand with it, and pressed Helena’s palm against her face, and only then noticed the wetness on her own cheek. “Jesus, Helena,” she breathed. “Promise me one thing, will you?”

“Anything.” The answer came too, too fast. Helena’s eyes, when Myka searched them, were clear, though. A different clarity than mere minutes before, but clarity nevertheless. 

“Never do anything that makes me do something like this ever again.”

Helena knew what she meant; Myka could see that quite plainly. Helena knew, and fought to do what Myka had asked, and Myka knew she wouldn’t get that promise even before the other woman spoke. “Promise,” Helena tasted the word on her tongue. “Myka, I… I want to. I don’t know if…” she swallowed. “Will you accept my promise that I will try my utmost?”

“I will be there for you if you do,” Myka answered. “I don’t know if I’ll be allowed to come back here, but I’ll be there.” It wasn’t acceptance, but then Helena’s words hadn’t been a promise, either. 

But.

Helena’s ‘yes’ still rang in Myka’s ears. Helena had surrendered herself completely with it, and that had been more than promise, and Myka had more than accepted.

They rose slowly; Myka had most of Helena’s weight as they walked towards where she had kicked Helena’s pants into a corner. Cuffed hands on one of her shoulders, Myka knelt to help Helena back into them, commiserating with Helena’s every wince, refraining from apology. This had been hard enough to do in the first place, she’d be damned if she would apologize for it now.

When Helena stood in the doorway, ready to be led away by the guard at her side, Myka called out to her and pointed to the jacket Helena still wore. 

“Keep it,” she grinned, “you can owe me.”

Helena’s answering smile was slow to bloom, and it wasn’t big even at its peak. Exhaustion filled it, remnants of pain, and still a tinge of incredulity.

But.

There also was truth, and trust, and more calm than Myka had ever seen.

Yes.


End file.
